Thanksgiving

Well, it's what everyone is calling Black Friday. The melee begins over getting the best deal on a gift for someone that, do you really want to anyway? I chose to stay home. I put in over 7 years of my life working retail and just don't go near a mall if at all possible until way into the new year. Instead I chose to sleep late, have a wonderfully relaxed breakfast with my room mate, did laundry, watched a few shows on the net I wanted to catch up with, and took the dog out to a state park this afternoon for a nice long walk in the sunshine.

As we were walking I started thinking about Thanksgiving, i.e. gratitude, and what that really means in my life. For me I realized it's simply a point of view. I could rattle off a list of trials and complications that I've been through and how each thing is something that happened to me. Would you feel properly sorry for me or begin to tell me your sad story? I could spend hours writing down things, "I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that" but it seems different somehow to what gratitude feels like.

Although that feeling place is often hard to put into words I'm going to give it a shot. It's when you can feel your big toe and it's vibrating, just a little, with the gratitude for you own life, like Gratitude lives there, and you suddenly become aware of feeling it everywhere in your body and how it feels completely different in each place, yet there's some thread that you recognize "That's Gratitude".

And then it's what your entire body is made of, Love in it's pure unadulterated state, un-manipulated, unaltered, uncomplicated.

It's when the world at large keeps telling you you don't know what you're doing and inside you there's a knowing that no matter what, you're fine...not you're going to be fine but you already are, right now in this moment, everything is good, the pieces are snapping together and you're beginning to see You.

It's when you can see the larger picture that's making up You and want every piece that's in the puzzle because every piece is You.

And it's the simplicity of a breath and the beauty of a dream and then a way of life.

Feeling Gratitude, how it lives in me, is something that stretches me from one day to the next, one moment to the next, because it is ever in motion, expanding and creating something new to explore, teaching me how to relate, how to stand in relationship with the world around me and in me.

Thanksgiving, not giving thanks, giving away, giving up something of yourself, but rather leaving an offering, recognizing the relationship, the connection, that lives and breathes and feeds in every way possible.

Happy Thanksgiving.

What am I doing?

So here's a question...how come I can write for myself, I can write for hours in my journal but I sit here to come up with a new blog and I draw a complete blank?

I consider myself a writer, have even published a small book of poetry, and am getting myself out there freelancing and I KNOW in every cell of me, in the very core of me that I am a writer. It's all I think about, all I want to do, and yet when I sit to write something that I know will be out in the world for others to see practically instantly I freeze up. And I know that at this point no one's even reading this blog at all! I am writing this more for myself right now, and that's ok.

I get that there's power for me here, personal power. There are huge pieces of myself I will regain by doing this and the wanting of it is digging deeper into me all the time. I'll be out in the grocery store and be writing a story in my head as I'm pushing my basket around, get excited about the idea, yet I get home and sit down to write it and suddenly can't find it and don't know what to write.

So, here, I'm going to just give myself the space to type, write, get my fears out about the movement of this, even if it doesn't make sense to the outside eyes right now. It really is for me, about me, about my process, and I know it is all leading me somewhere....to myself.

Gratitude

So, a new week and a new day. Lots to be grateful for and lots to let go of. I often wonder the direction of things in my life and realize I cannot know, all I can know is right now. Where I am right now. And right now I'm going to use this space to express how grateful I am to everyone in my life who assists me in so many ways.

The memories of my youth have been surfacing a lot these days. Memories of how I wandered around for years feeling lost, alone, misunderstood, and how I didn't understand how I was taking up space here when there was no where I fit. I spent a lot of energy maintaining a place of anger, which now I can observe as at least if I was angry I was alive.

Taking that to where I am now I can feel all those things, how true and real it all felt to me, yet now I have the buffer of time, I've matured a little bit and I have built an incredible support system around me. Even when I touch those places again and feel the unmistakable pull of that under toe, and even in those moments of getting pulled in to the swirling spinning mess, I know all I really have to do is ask for help and it's there. All I have to do is be willing to ask.

And it's always there. My circle of friends, my teachers, are always there is some shape or form that I can draw on to remind me of the strength that I walk with in myself. And there is also that calm sweet voice of my own Spirit, urging me to be still and listen. And ever holding my hand saying,"I never left you."

So to everyone I offer my gratitude for the unending journey of love. I am loving you all.